My blunt father comes back from the trains. We recognize in the night the whistle of the locomotive perforating the rain with a wandering moan lament of the night, and later the door shivering opens. A rush of wind came in with my father, And between footsteps and drafts The house shook. The surprised doors banged with the dryBark of pistols, the staircase groaned, And a loud voice, complaining, grumbledWhile in the wild dark, the waterfall rain Rumbled on the roofs And, little by little, drowned the world And all that could be heard was the windBattling with the rain. He was, however, a daily happening. Captain of his train, of the cold dawn, And scarcely had the sun Begun to show itself Than there he was with his beard, His red and green flags, his lamps prepared, The engine coal in its little inferno, The station with trains in the mist, And his duty to geography. The railwayman is a sailor on earth And in the small ports without a sea line-The forest towns- the train runs, runs, Unbridling the natural world, Completing its navigation of the earth. When the long train comes to rest, Friends come together, Come in, and the doors of my childhood open, The table shakesAt the slam of a railwayman’s hand, The thick glasses of companions jump And the glitter flashed out from the eyes of the wine. My poor, hard father, there he was at the axis of existence, virile in friendship, his glass full. His life was a running campaign, And between his early rising and his traveling, Between arriving and rushing off, One day, rainier than other days, The railwayman, José del Carmen Reyes, Climbed aboard the train of death, and so far has not come back. Translated by Alastair Reed